Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill

, on behalf of the Minister for the Environment: I move, That the Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a second time. The amendments in the bill will be the biggest change to the Resource Management Act since 1991. The key objectives are to increase certainty, reduce delays and costs, and ensure consistency of process. The amendments are evolutionary improvements rather than revolutionary. They are about finding practical solutions to make the Act work better. Importantly, the amendments do not affect the Act’s fundamental principles of strong environmental protection, local decision-making, and public participation. Rather, the bill focuses on ways to improve the quality of decisions and processes. It includes measures to increase certainty and to reduce delay, cost, and the abuse of process. As Michael Barnett, the CEO of the Auckland chamber of commerce, noted after surveying 350 of its members: “The issue with the Resource Management Act is not so much the contents of the Act preventing development proceeding, but how it is administered by local authorities.”

The bill forms part of a wider package of reform, which includes improvements to legislation, practice, and resources. We know this package is already having a real impact. According to a 2004 Business New Zealand - KPMG compliance cost survey, average total environment-related compliance costs have decreased by almost 40 percent between 2003 and 2004, from $12,930 in that first year to $7,860 in 2004. KPMG attributed the reduced cost to improved implementation of the Act by local authorities, and to increased resources for the Environment Court since 2001. Delays in appeals to the Environment Court have been slashed by more than half since 2001, due to a substantial boost in funding and a new system for managing the caseload. The Ministry for the Environment is taking on a greater role in helping local government to develop knowledge and practice. That includes enhancing the ministry’s best-practice programme, and targeted one-on-one assistance for specific councils.

The Government understands that making the Act work is about achieving better administration of the Act. That relies on input from local and central government, developers, and the community. The process for the review built on that. Extensive discussions were held with local government, industry, environmental organisations, and the wider community over an 18-month period. That process was very different from previous reviews of the Act, and Local Government New Zealand has described it as: “an exemplary collaborative exercise.” I will contrast Labour’s approach to working with the local government and business sector successfully with that of National. It is only a week ago now since National Party leader Dr Brash had to lead Nick Smith back to apologise to local government representatives, after a typically boorish attack by Mr Smith at a social gathering at the Local Government New Zealand conference. Though few people would actually consider being described as a traitor to the National Party to be any kind of insult at all, Mr Smith’s uncontrolled outburst has offended and angered many in the sector.

This bill is about achieving the right balance between local and national interests. It enables greater use of national policy statements and national environmental standards, by reinforcing their role and status under the Act. National policy statements and national environmental standards will give clear national direction, and will provide certainty and consistency for communities and developers. The review of the Act highlighted that some decisions need to be dealt with at a national level, or with assistance from central government. The bill provides more tools in that area, including the ability to make Crown submissions, appoint a member of a hearings panel, and direct councils to consider matters jointly. Those options are decided in consultation with local authorities from a menu of options that will ensure that central government can play a more effective role in matters that may have national significance. The bill also provides more powers for the Minister for the Environment to ensure local authorities are addressing their functions and duties under the Act.

The Government has signalled its intention to take a stronger leadership role in implementing and supporting the Act. However, that will not be at the expense of local decision-making. We have rejected the calls of a few extreme voices that want to see the Act ripped apart for the sake of unfettered development. Quite frankly, that is neither sensible or necessary—nor is it what even the business community has asked us to do. The Government is committed to good local decision-making. Dr Brash says there is too much decision making in the hands of local communities and their councils. Developers should be able to bypass local community decision-making and there should be less recognition, according to National, of those affected by environmental effects, in favour of recognising those who produce them. Silencing communities is, after all, becoming a theme in National’s election promises. Labour’s bill rightly shakes up the decision making under the Act. It sets accreditation standards for local decision-makers, and it gives them powers to make first-instance hearings more effective and robust. The bill improves the design and process for local policy-making. Changes to the requirements for plans mean they will be streamlined and easier to understand. Other changes give greater status to regional policy statements, and therefore enable more integrated and strategic planning across and between districts and regions.

The bill clarifies consultation requirements, and promotes better consultation with tangata whenua during the development of plans and policy statements. In terms of resource consents, iwi will have the same opportunity to participate as any other person or party affected by an activity. The bill provides a framework for local authorities to enter into joint management agreements with public bodies and iwi. That is aimed at encouraging success stories, such as the partnerships that councils have established with Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa, and Ngāti Whātua. Other key changes clarify regional council functions under the bill in respect of contaminated land, the integration of infrastructure with land use, and the allocation of natural resources.

The bill had the benefit of a robust select committee process, and I thank the Local Government and Environment Committee for all the hard work it put into the bill. My colleagues will talk more about that process. The Government heard submissions from all sections of the community and, as a result, it has recommended a number of changes. Those changes are consistent with the principles of the review and the original policy intention. The select committee process has also highlighted that many of the criticisms of the court are outdated. The court is taking steps to minimise costs and delays. It does not conduct every appeal on a full de novo basis, and it tailors the process to the circumstances of each case.

The bill also amends the Electricity Act 1992 by extending the existing rights of operators in terms of works relating to roads and level crossings. The bill extends those rights to high voltage works but not to above-ground structures, such as poles or towers.

A Supplementary Order Paper will be tabled today, containing several amendments that the Government wishes to make to the bill. Most of the amendments are technical in nature, and seek to clarify wording or to improve the workability of the bill as a result of changes recommended by the select committee. However, there are six more substantive amendments. First, it is proposed that the bill be amended to include a clear statement that consent authorities must consider the value of existing investment when considering applications for a new consent to replace an existing consent, on its expiry. That was part of the Government’s original policy, and it will encourage maintenance of and long-term investment in existing infrastructure. Second, the bill as reported back creates confusion about the content of the iwi register and the process for its development. The Supplementary Order Paper includes changes that clarify when local authorities should include details of hapū on the register. There is also material relating to the national policy statements and the New Zealand coastal policy statement, and an amendment to the ministerial powers to intervene in matters of national significance in the coastal marine area. Finally, there are two technical amendments proposed to resolve issues that have arisen out of the aquaculture reform and foreshore and seabed legislation. The current wording requires regional councils to carry out a full review of regional policy statements. That requirement is being somewhat softened.

Labour is committed to having a clean and healthy environment, and to giving people a say in environmental decision-making. Protecting our environment is a strategic investment that all of us wish to make for New Zealand’s future. The Resource Management Act is about striking the right balance between using our environment and protecting it for future generations. The wide support that this bill has received reflects the acceptability of the changes it contains, and I am pleased to commend it to the House.

In no area of public policy has the Labour Government made a greater hash of things than in respect of resource management. It has been a comedy of errors and blunders for 6 years, for which this country is paying a high price. It is paying in terms of a 38 percent increase in traffic congestion in a city like Auckland. It is paying in terms of security of power supply. A number of officials are crossing their legs, their fingers, and everything else to try to keep the lights on, and power prices have gone up by over 52 percent. I am not at all surprised that the Minister is running to hide. I would be, too, with this sort of a botch up. We have seen a lack of investment in key areas, such as forestry. New Zealand should be investing in timber processing rather than in exporting logs. The environment is paying a high price, as well, for the fumbles and errors of the Government.

It is quite telling that this is the last legislative act of this rotten, dying Government. [Interruption] I say to Mr Samuels that on its very first day the Labour Government said that the Resource Management Act was beautifully written, beautifully crafted, and did not need changing. One of the very first acts of the Government in 1999 was to reject Simon Upton’s amendment bill. Six years later, a grovelling, snivelling Minister is back before the Parliament, saying: “Well, actually we got it wrong. We’ve got to somehow patch up this RMA in the very last week of the House.”

When the bill was introduced—the Minister’s big flagship—David Benson-Pope said that the most significant change was removing de novo hearings in the Environment Court. That is what David Benson-Pope told the Parliament and the people of New Zealand. Yet now it has suddenly gone. We have seen more flip-flops on this bill than on Bondi Beach. The Government has had to surrender ground all over the place.

Let me give another example. The member opposite, Judith Tizard, said that it was “evil and dangerous” to refer things directly to the Environment Court. Well, what does this bill do?

💬 Hon Judith Tizard: I did not. What absolute rubbish!

Well she did. I ask her to check the Hansard of November 1998, when she said in the House that Simon Upton’s proposal for projects to be able to go directly to the Environment Court was “evil and dangerous”. But now she supports it. That shows that members opposite will say absolutely anything to save their political bacon. I would like to know whether Marian Hobbs will contribute to this debate. She is the Minister who has been in charge of Labour’s botch-ups with the Resource Management Act for the last 6 years. The Government is like a beached whale. It is flailing about and has no idea what it will do to resolve the very serious issues for New Zealand in respect of the Resource Management Act.

I go back to the issue of direct referral to the Environment Court. Labour says that National would politicise the process. Well, is that not interesting? Under this bill, who will decide which projects get referred directly to the Environment Court? The answer is the Minister. In other words, if someone is a mate of the Government, and if someone has written out some big cheques for Labour’s election campaign, that person will be able to avoid the council hearing and go straight off to the Environment Court.

💬 Jill Pettis: At least it doesn’t come from Uncle Sam.

Well, well, is that not an interesting remark from Jill Pettis? Perhaps she would like to talk to Dover Samuels, who has been getting cheques from Uncle Sam—I understand that the amount was $10,000. Such diversions are not surprising. The Government’s position is so weak on these issues that it does not want to debate the real issues.

Then the Labour Party talked about the importance of community consultation and community involvement and it introduced a 32-page Supplementary Order Paper, which was tabled this morning, to become law by tonight. Such is the respect that this Government has for public consultation it is prepared to make 32 pages of changes to the Resource Management Act, with zero consultation. Opposition parties such as mine received this Supplementary Order Paper only this morning. I ask what sort of outrageous abuse of the lawmaking process is that. The Government has the cheek to talk about the importance of public consultation. Do not make me sick!

I turn to what is wrong with this bill. Firstly, it is quite extraordinary what this bill does not do. Everybody knows that a gravy train of indulgence has been created for Māori and iwi as a consequence of the Resource Management Act.

Can I give members a practical example. My local Richmond garden club wants to be able to upgrade an area of public park in my electorate. Its members are all volunteers, but they have been told they have to pay a local iwi supervisor $40 an hour to ensure they do not dig up any old pipis or the like that Māori had there. What sort of outrage or lunacy is there, in that respect? This Government has forked out millions of dollars in relation to the new prison at Port Waikato—paid to grease the palms of the local friendly iwi so that the prison might be built. There is example after example, and what does this bill do to deal with the matter so that we might not chase the taniwha when we are trying to build a road? What does this bill do about those issues? The answer is: absolutely nothing—in fact, it actually makes it worse. What this Government is proposing with regard to co-management will only make those problems with the Resource Management Act more difficult.

Then there are issues in respect of how long it takes to make changes in a plan. What really makes mainstream New Zealanders angry with this Government over the Resource Management Act is when it messes with their sport. Eden Park in Auckland needs to be upgraded in order for New Zealand to have a chance of hosting the rugby world cup in 2012, yet this Government is handing out money to the opponents of that upgrade so that they might prevent it. With regard to the Western Springs Speedway, we see that this Government is killing it off and giving money to the speedway’s opponents. National will be putting forward amendments at the Committee stage to provide for the resolution of that problem in a sensible way, by empowering the Auckland City Council to make decisions for its community. I ask Dover Samuels whether he will be voting for the amendment to save the Western Springs speedway.

💬 Hon Dover Samuels: You are doing all the talking; you tell us.

Ah! You see, members opposite, for all the talk about trusting councils, will have a real test in deciding whether to support our amendment, which says that it is for councils to decide whether a notified plan will take effect at that time. I will bet that members opposite will vote for bureaucracy rather than for common sense. For all the talk we have from Labour members about empowering councils and communities, those members are really into funding their narrow sector mates.

The reality is that the Resource Management Act has turned into legislation whereby the minority is able to stop the majority. A National Government—a change of Government—will be required to inject some common sense into that Act so that we can have decent environmental standards, and also so that New Zealanders can get on, grow, and develop.

The unprincipled rhetoric of that last speech can be unpicked by two simple examples. National will always scratch the itch. Its representative did so in relation to Māori issues in that last speech by saying that nothing in this bill changes the status quo.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: That’s right.

Dr Smith has just said that that is right. He was obviously asleep at the relevant times at the Local Government and Environment Committee, because one of the things this bill does is make it absolutely clear that no applicant for a resource consent has an obligation to consult with anyone—with anyone, including iwi or Māori groups. There is now no obligation to consult. There was an uncertainty of law, until this bill was brought forward, as to whether that was the position. This bill remedies that uncertainty by making it clear that no one has to consult with anyone else prior to making an application for a resource consent. That change in the law is appropriate, because we all want to have transparent procedures in this country whereby no one can blackmail other people to pay money in order to get resource consents. So Dr Smith, on behalf of the National Party, has misinformed listeners today on that important point.

The other issue is that he said there were problems with great delays in dealing with applications under the Resource Management Act. That was the position 5 years ago, but it is not the position now. Again, Dr Smith was on the select committee when we met with Judge Bollard, the principal planning judge of the Environment Court. Judge Bollard set out—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I am sorry to interrupt the member, but there are far too many interjections across the House from one to another. I mention to members that the rules permitting interjections are predicated on the assumption that the person being interjected against has the call. Interjections are not permitted at all when they are directed at a member who does not have the call, and that practice has been going on far too often.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That was true of my speech. I had a continual barrage of interjections—quite contrary to the speech of the Minister, to whom we gave a pretty fair hearing. Now, when the tables are turned and a Labour member is speaking, suddenly you get all precious—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): No! The ruling has been given because two members who do not have the call—you and Mr Samuels—have been interjecting on each other. You have been doing it far too often. I did not pick on just one person; it was one all.

I thank you for that ruling, Mr Speaker, and trust that that time will not come out of my speech time.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Certainly not.

The second issue on which Dr Smith misled listeners concerned the suggestion that time frames for dealing with appeals on consents have not been improved. We heard from Judge Bollard, the Principal Environment Court Judge—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I never said that.

The member said there were still substantial delays that were problematic in terms of consents, but the reality is different. Judge Bollard came to the select committee and showed us that the majority of cases are now allocated a hearing date upon appeal within 6 months of the date of the appeal. There are exceptions to that, but those exceptions are cases where the parties are in mediation and are happy, on all sides, for the matter to be delayed. Apart from those cases, the majority of cases are being dealt with in a very timely period. Why is that? The answer is twofold. Firstly, a large number of plan references—or appeals against plans, as people might understand them to be—that were outstanding have been resolved. Secondly, the number of Environment Court judges has been increased, so there are not as many delays as there were.

The select committee and, indeed, the Government were faced with strident criticism of the Resource Management Act. The essential choice for any central Government on those issues is whether the decision-making process is delegated to councils, with appeal rights to another body, or whether decisions are taken at central Government level, in Wellington. I, for one, and this Government believe that the current principle of delegating those decisions to territorial authorities is the right way to go.

When the matter came to the select committee, we had experimented with the idea that we would truncate appeal rights by limiting them to re-litigations of evidence that had already been given at initial council hearings. That had some initial attraction, because it was thought that it would avoid going through the facts twice. But, as was pointed out by almost all submitters, be they territorial authorities, developers, environmental groups, the Law Society, or the Planning Institute, the sting in the tail is that, because only fewer than one in 10 cases goes on appeal, we do not want to add costs to the nine cases that do not go on appeal, in order to save costs on the one in 10 that does.

The problem we have to grapple with is that if we limit appeal rights so as not to give people a right to introduce new evidence on appeal, then everyone is forced to go about their initial hearing before the council in a much more thorough way, which requires them to lead more expensive expert evidence, to take a more litigious approach, and probably more often to employ lawyers to represent them at the first hearing. That is undesirable in terms of both the accessibility of the initial forum to lay people and the cost of the process to applicants and objectors alike. The Local Government and Environment Committee felt that that evidence was compelling, and the Government agreed. So we have reverted to a position similar to what we had prior to this bill.

But we have made an important change: the Environment Court must now have regard to the original decision at the first hearing. Until now, the Environment Court has been able to start again and completely ignore the council hearing. Indeed, on occasions the Environment Court has said that it does not even need to read the original decision, because it has the right to start again and to decide as it thinks fit without regard to the original council decision. We have changed that situation by making it an obligation of the Environment Court to have regard to the original decision. In effect, that means that the Environment Court will have to give reasons if it departs from the decision of the council. That is very proper.

This bill does a couple of other things. It sets up a regime to deal with matters that cross boundaries and projects that are very large. The most recent examples are Meridian Energy’s applications for consents on Project Aqua. Such projects are so large and so complex that they are very difficult for smaller councils, especially, to deal with. Those councils do not have the expertise or the resources needed to deal with some of those applications relating to very large projects. So there has been a call, not just from developers like Meridian Energy but also from councils and other interest groups, to have some of those bigger things dealt with under a separate process. We have set up that separate process in this bill, but we have taken steps to ensure that it will apply only Resource Management Act principles. We are not weighting it in favour of the outcome.

The select committee made an additional recommendation to protect the independence of decisions on those matters by making sure that the decision-making body is always chaired by an independent judge. In this case the judge has to be either a member of the Environment Court or a retired member of the Environment Court. So a judge will always hear those matters independently, with an expert board that will be well placed to consider the issues raised.

Long hearings on big, complex issues can take 6 months to a year, and no one who is running that particular gauntlet wants to have to do it twice. We do not want a board of inquiry listening to things for 6 months and then an appeal right creating a similar sort of hearing, again on the facts, for another 6 months. That is a waste of everyone’s time and money. The appeal might reach a slightly different answer, but I do not think it would normally be a better answer. So in respect of applications that have been called in and put through this special process, appeals are limited to matters of law rather than re-litigation of the facts.

The select committee heard about problems with the complexity of layers of plans where some councils have not finished their planning documents. The plans are the planning laws for the district. Some areas have old transitional plans—which were old town and country plans—proposed plans under the Resource Management Act, proposed variations, and proposed variations to proposed variations, none of which have been finished. That creates layers of complexity and means that more applications have to be dealt with as non-complying activities. Even the most expert people have trouble knowing what is allowed and what is not allowed. As a consequence, the select committee has recommended that plans and variations at the council stage of proceedings should be completed within 2 years of the date of their notification. That recommendation came from the select committee, and it is a good one. I thank the select committee members for their hard work on this bill.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is a very serious point of order about parliamentary process in respect of Supplementary Order Paper 389, which has been tabled by the Government today. It is a 36-page Supplementary Order Paper. I have counted up the number of clauses it changes—it changes 132 clauses of the bill. It is a very significant Supplementary Order Paper. On the back page, the Supplementary Order Paper states: “This Supplementary Order Paper refines the drafting of changes made to the Bill …”, and includes this sentence: “It also includes drafting to give effect to new policy.” That is all it states—“to give effect to new policy.” If we read the Standing Orders—and I notably want to introduce members’ attention to Standing Order 256—we see that an explanatory note must state the policy that the bill seeks to achieve. Well, for the explanatory note simply to state that the Supplementary Order Paper is to give effect to new policy—

💬 Jill Pettis: Is this a speech?

No, it is a very important point of order. I know that Jill Pettis—

💬 Simon Power: Point of order—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I know what the member is going to say. I am well aware, and so are members, that there are to be no interjections at all during a point of order. The member will stand and apologise.

💬 Jill Pettis: I apologise.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you.

I can understand why the Government is not interested in democracy.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Come to the point of order, please, Dr Smith.

My point of order is that all the explanatory note states about the 36 pages of changes to this bill is: “It also includes drafting to give effect to new policy.” That cannot in any way be deemed to comply with the requirement that an explanatory note state the policy it seeks to achieve. The reason why this is such a serious matter, Mr Assistant Speaker, and why I ask you to give a considered ruling—and I am drawing it to your attention at the earliest possible moment—is that this Supplementary Order Paper was tabled only today. It is intended to be the law of the land by tonight. For MPs to be able to debate it intelligently, when there have been policy changes—and quite clearly there have, because the Supplementary Order Paper states that it will give effect to new policy—there must actually be in the explanatory note, as is a requirement of the Standing Orders, something about what that new policy is. I ask you, Mr Assistant Speaker, to make a ruling that this explanatory note does not comply with the Standing Orders, and to urgently seek the Government and the Minister to provide an explanatory note that does comply with the rules of this House and treats democracy with a bit of respect.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you very much for your deliberation and consideration, Dr Smith. Standing Order 256 relates to the explanatory note of a bill. It does not apply to a Supplementary Order Paper, which does not have to have an explanatory note, at all. There is nothing to prevent a Supplementary Order Paper from being circulated during the second reading debate.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Yes, I do note that Standing Order 256 relates to the explanatory note of a bill. But are you giving a ruling that an explanatory note of a Supplementary Order Paper does not have to comply with that Standing Order? Quite clearly, a Supplementary Order Paper is about a change to a bill—it introduces new policy. This Supplementary Order Paper is quite direct in saying that there is new policy; it just does not tell us what it is. Are you really giving a ruling that an explanatory note on a Supplementary Order Paper does not have to comply with the requirement in Standing Order 256, with regard to explanatory notes? This is a change to a bill. I do not expect you to make a ruling straight away. It is a very important point. If we are going to have an explanatory note that simply states: “This Supplementary Order Paper refines the drafting of changes made to the Bill by the select committee. It also includes drafting to give effect to new policy.”, and if that is going to be accepted by this Parliament as an explanatory note, then the whole purpose of having explanatory notes is thrown to the wall. That explanatory note could be used in every single bill or Supplementary Order Paper introduced by a Government, without giving anybody any idea of what the Government intends by the policy.

Thank you again, Dr Smith, for that consideration. The Speaker himself or herself cannot decide on the adequacy of a Supplementary Order Paper’s explanatory note. There does not have to be a note, at all. It is a matter for criticism in debate, and I am sure that the member will take every opportunity to raise that matter.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It concerns the last point you made. The Standing Order is very clear. It does not say “may”, and I am not asking the Speaker or the Clerk’s Office to make a determination as to whether it is a proper interpretation. What it states is: “must have an explanatory note that states the policy …”. That is what the Standing Order states. How can an explanatory note that simply states: “to give effect to new policy”, possibly comply with a requirement that it state the policy? Where in that explanatory note is the statement of the policy?

I just say to Dr Smith that the Standing Order does not apply to a Supplementary Order Paper, and there is nothing to prevent a Supplementary Order Paper from being circulated during the second reading debate.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I acknowledge the point you make, drawing a distinction between a bill and a Supplementary Order Paper, and the requirement for explanatory notes. We would not dispute that case. But Dr Nick Smith raises an interesting point. The Standing Order you refer to with respect to amendments by way of Supplementary Order Paper—Standing Order 299—states: “Any member intending to move an amendment to a bill may lodge a written copy of the amendment …”, and then goes on, without stating any requirement for an explanatory note. The interesting thing about that is that the explanatory note in this case indicates that the drafting is to give effect to new policy, which, I submit, is quite different to an amendment to an existing bill. That is the important distinction. When Standing Order 299 refers to Supplementary Order Papers, it makes clear that it is talking about an amendment to an existing bill—that is, the first instance. But the explanatory note to this Supplementary Order Paper indicates that new policy is being introduced. That is quite a different matter, and a matter to which Dr Nick Smith has drawn your attention in a pretty acute way. I ask for your views on that matter. The two cases are quite distinct. I accept the point that a Supplementary Order Paper does not have to contain an explanatory note and that that is a matter for debate. But when a Supplementary Order Paper itself states that it contains new policy, that makes it different from just an amendment to a bill, as in the explanation with respect to Supplementary Order Papers contained in Standing Order 299.

Mr Assistant Speaker, your first ruling was quite right. The other point that the last honourable member spoke about is dealt with under the question of whether the amendment is within the scope of the bill. As long as an amendment is within the scope of the bill, it can be included within a Supplementary Order Paper without an explanatory note.

Thank you very much for your contribution, Mr Parker. The test for admissibility of an amendment is whether it is relevant; not whether it is new policy. It will be for the Chairperson to rule on whether these amendments are relevant when the House gets to the Committee stage of the legislation.

Speaking to the point of order—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Briefly—I have ruled.

I accept that. But it raises another interesting question. How are we to know whether an amendment is relevant if it is not contained in an explanatory note on the reverse of the Supplementary Order Paper? That is the very question we are asking.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): That will be a matter for the Chairperson, Mr Power, but thank you for drawing it to my attention.

I thank my colleague Jim Peters for allowing me to speak earlier, as I have to be somewhere else at 12. When the Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand Inc., business associations, local authorities, and the Environment and Conservation Organisations of New Zealand all turn up at a select committee and say the same thing—that the Government has got major parts of this bill seriously wrong—and give the same reasons, then we know there must be something in it. That, in fact, did happen in this case at the Local Government and Environment Committee. There was widespread agreement among the submitters that the draconian ministerial powers, allowing the Minister to instruct councils to put certain things in their plans, and the interference with the powers of the Environment Court to conduct a complete hearing were wrong, unnecessary, and damaging.

💬 David Parker: And were changed.

And they were changed. A lot of the changes in the bill as introduced were mindless tinkering with the Resource Management Act. It was as though the Minister had said to officials: “We’re getting a lot of flak about the Resource Management Act. Go and fix it, will you?”, the officials had asked: “Minister, what exactly do you want us to fix?”, and the Minister had replied: “Basically, don’t totally damage the environment and do away with public rights, but just fix it so that we don’t get all these complaints about it.”

So the officials came up with things as mindless as mandatory mediation. Mediation is a process that works if one has goodwill and cooperation on both sides, and achieves absolutely nothing if one does not. How on earth does one make mediation work if somebody is there under duress? So we got rid of that one. The officials came up with mindless tinkering, like taking away the requirement for plans to include objectives because it would make plans shorter by about a paragraph—or maybe up to a page. Yet if plans do not include objectives, how does one measure whether the rules and policies in the plans achieve what they are there for? That had huge consequences right through the bill, and the committee has put mandatory objectives back into plans. There was tinkering with the role of the Environment Court, trying to shorten court processes but thereby making council processes much longer, more laborious, and more difficult for the public to participate in. That was clearly not going to work, and that has been fixed as well.

I am proud to have chaired the select committee that has substantially rewritten considerable parts of this bill—with, I have to say, a lot of cooperation and good sense around the table. Even though many of us had different views about where the Resource Management Act should be heading, we nevertheless had a high degree of cooperation about using this amendment to make things work as well as we could. We have restored the powers of the Environment Court to hear all the evidence before it and consider that evidence properly. As I said, we have left objectives in plans. We have got rid of the bizarre requirement for regional councils to promote infrastructure. Regional councils are there to manage effects on water, air, and soil—to manage effects on the environment of the region and planning across the region. Giving them the job of promoting power lines and motorways was clearly in conflict with their purpose.

We have got rid of the requirement for regional councils to remediate contaminated sites, which they could have done only by putting the full cost on the landowner, because at present there is still no legal defence for innocent landowners who have taken over a piece of land with no way at all of knowing that it has been contaminated by a previous owner, and the State still takes no responsibility for contamination that it has caused on land that it has managed, or contamination that it has required through the requirement to use certain chemicals with long-lived effects. That matter still needs to be addressed. We still need law on the innocent landowner defence. We still need the State to step up to its responsibilities in terms of contaminated sites. But at least we have prevented this bill from obliging regional councils to clobber landowners at present. We have at least provided for an appeal against the draconian strike-out procedures, whereby a council may decide that evidence is not relevant and refuse to hear it. We know that in many cases councils will use that power with extreme care, but that in some cases the Environment Court has found that councils were far too close to developers and could well have used such a power wrongly against members of the community who wanted to be heard.

After hearing many, many submissions from Māori that kaitiakitanga lies often not with iwi authorities but with hapū in particular cases, we have provided a role for hapū. We have recognised hapū, in some circumstances, as the people who should be consulted on plans and who should be on the register that councils will hold of the Māori organisations they should deal with on resource issues in their community.

We have constrained the ministerial powers quite considerably. There are now criteria against which ministerial decisions are reviewable, and Ministers will not be able to give just any old instruction to councils and plans. But this bill is still an attempt to centralise decision making; to put the national interest, as perceived by the Government of the day, ahead of the local interest, as perceived by the people; to skew the Resource Management Act towards development rather than towards environmental protection; to provide an easy track for big infrastructure projects like pylons, prisons, motorways, and power stations, which will have preference over the ordinary person’s resource consent; and to make life harder for community groups that are trying, with very little in the way of resources or help, to protect their local environment against big, damaging projects.

Much of that agenda remains in the bill, despite the improvements that the select committee has made, and the Greens, therefore, do not support the bill. In particular, we are concerned about the new process for setting national policy statements. Rather than a board of inquiry and a broad public debate leading to a robust national policy statement with cross-party and cross-society support that will be enduring to guide plans and policy statements, we will have a quick and dirty national policy statement, written by a Government official, with no public inquiry, no hearings, a submission process—which the official may or may not read—and then it will be law. It will be binding on all plans, and councils will gradually have to change their plans to comply. By the time they have done that there will be another Government in power, which will use the same quick and dirty process to overturn the national policy statement. We will get this policy see-saw every 3 years, which is not good for planning or for resource management.

We know that national environmental standards are now being drafted, in conjunction with the officials, by the industries that are being regulated by those standards. This bill makes the default position that those standards will be absolute and that councils will have to allow the degradation of their environment down to that minimum standard. So if people have really high-quality water in the rivers in their area, because they have been fortunate in the past and have not had a lot of polluting industry, they will not be able to set a standard to keep those waters to that high quality. They will have to allow them to be degraded down to the national standard, which, of course, will be set down to standards that rivers like the Ngākawau, which is full of coal tailings, and the Ōtara Creek in Auckland can potentially meet.

The call-in provisions have been changed so that the biggest and most controversial projects called in by the Minister will, unlike all others, not have to go through two hearings. They will have to go through only one. So there will be two hearings for someone’s veranda application but one hearing for the giant motorway or pylon process. At least the select committee insisted that that one hearing must be chaired by an Environment Court judge. That is an improvement.

The benefits, which were unanimously agreed, cannot compensate for these serious damages to the Act.

In 2002 New Zealand First claimed that the time was appropriate to thoroughly review the Resource Management Act. The backdrop to that, of course, was the work done in 1998-99 in the bill that is before the House. That review was not done. Our view then, as it is now, was that it was an appropriate time to see whether Part II of the principal Act, “Purpose and Principles” was still valid and whether the 1980s thinking, embodied in the Geoffrey Palmer concepts, was still appropriate. Today we remain firmly of the opinion that sustainable management, with its attendant goals and values, ought to have been reviewed. Sustainable development, now enshrined in the masthead of the New Zealand Environment magazine, needs to be aspired to.

There is growing scientific understanding of the environmental costs and risks associated with the use of our resources. We understand much better the inherent tension in the impact of the ethical and value judgments in the Act, and how they may not, or do not, accord with the property owners’ values and their right to develop and use natural and physical resources. We see, and have seen, the Resource Management Act as an enabling Act. My experience of the Act is that it has largely been so. It is an Act that allows New Zealanders to strive and thereby thrive. But others, unfortunately, see it too often as a limiting and restraining factor, and look to avoid and mitigate rather than to use the express intention of the Act.

When we looked at the legislation before us in 2004, we looked at the fact that it does need to have defined and clarified processes, but obstacles and frustrations have become part of those processes, and we need to ensure all affected parties have unhindered access to the consent process. That was the basis on which New Zealand First went into discussions last year. New Zealand First members were on the Local Government and Environment Committee.

The committee did well in its work in picking up a bill from the Associate Minister for the Environment that was ill formed and lacked clear direction in regard to what the Minister intended, and throughout that time, including the hearing of submissions, the committee worked really hard. I pay tribute to the chairperson of the committee, who has just spoken, for her work and her ability to resolve some of the inherent difficulties that the committee saw in the bill as introduced.

Therefore, it is with considerable alarm that we see today a 35-page Supplementary Order Paper. I thought that, for the first time, the Government had got it right, unlike the earlier bills we had discussed, such as the Local Government Bill 2002, which passed through the House without anyone outside the House having a chance to consider them. I thought that the month between the committee’s final examination and deliberation ought to have been the time to have come back to the House to see whether the Government had had a change of mind. Four weeks and some days later, on the very last day of the session, we are asked to consider the impact on the bill of the amendments on the Supplementary Order Paper.

The very slim explanatory note of the Supplementary Order Paper states that it “refines the drafting of changes made to the Bill by the select committee.” really begs the question of why the select committee was not part of that process. Why was it not the considered opinion of all parties in this House trying to develop a sounder bill than what was given to us? The explanatory note finishes: “It also includes drafting to give effect to new policy.” It really is something of a disgrace that a Government in its dying last days is endeavouring to persuade the country and the House that that is reasonable and fair practice. It is not, and New Zealand First protests against the Minister’s intention.

The Local Government and Environment Committee examined the bill, after hearing numerous submissions, and made a number of amendments and changes to the bill. A former member of this House, the honourable Rob Storey, made an interesting comment. He told us in Hamilton that he sat for 4 years on the committee that gave birth to this legislation. He conceded that the bill was not perfect and that amendments would be needed, as faults would develop, but in his mind this bill as introduced gave him great cause for concern.

Despite the excellent work done by the select committee, New Zealand First is of the same mind today as when the bill first came to the House.

The select committee examined the broad sweep of ministerial powers—some new. It looked at the development of national environmental standards. The restatement of regional and district plans and policy statements were all examined. It gave extensive thought to local authority hearing processes for plans and resource consents, and how these could be speeded up, and, in the course of that, gave more flexibility to pre-hearing meetings, which have always been available under the Act, but have not been used as they could have been. The committee heard the concerns of applicants and councils regarding the requests for further information provision. That is a real issue for them. The provision was redefined and now gives new powers to hearing panels and provides for accredited commissioners. In other words, the bill gives some foretaste of the known wish of district and regional bodies to have a higher level of skill in regard to hearings and, indeed, the whole resource management process. In particular, we heard interesting comments from the Environment Court, and they were taken into account in the considered mind of the committee.

New Zealand First is still concerned about ministerial call-in of applications. Under the previous regime the Hon Simon Upton did it once. The insertion of another option as a major feature of this bill, introduces some uncertainty as to the Government’s real intentions in the future—should the people of this country be so unwise as to put them back in office. The new provision was somewhat defined by the committee in regard to a potential board of inquiry. We spent some time ensuring that the skill, knowledge, and expertise needed must be part of a defined rationale from the Minister.

When I look back at the policy that the New Zealand First caucus looked at last year, seeking a faster, speedier, fairer process, I wonder why I would not support this bill. In developing our policy we were conscious of the immense amount of work done by councils in formulating and formatting the present state of planning. We were conscious of the millions and millions of dollars of ratepayers’ money, and others, spent to put together plans. More important, we were conscious of the number of local people who, throughout the course of that planning period of the past 11 to 12 years, had been a core and essential part of district and regional plans. Alongside that, of course, we have the definitive and abundant, almost too many, judgments and decisions handed down by various courts of the land about many aspects of planning and consents.

So against that backdrop, New Zealand First measured its response to this bill. We contend very strongly that, despite the excellent work done by the select committee, the final impact of this bill is just a modern version of the “command and control” approach to environmental decision-making. Territorial and regional authorities will be forced to accept overriding statements from central government, either in national policy statements, or in environmental standards, and not in accordance with the matters that the Labour Party has talked so much about in the past with regard to consultation, but imposed, directed, mandatory statements from on high.

That is not in keeping with the whole history of this bill and the Act. It is not in keeping with the whole history of participation within the democratic process and an approach to public law that have been the hallmarks. Was there a need for change, and has that change been properly expressed? The answer is, partially. Are the people out there such as farmers, community groups, local authorities, industry, lawyers, and the community who wanted change, satisfied? Yes, but this is not the change sought.

New Zealand First strongly believes that in 2005 this bill should be primarily concerned with promoting the sustainable development of our resources, which is about understanding people’s needs and the capacity of this country to further use, and better use, our natural and physical resources. New Zealand First, as part of an incoming Government, or with ability to be part of a Government’s future programme, will later this year move to further review the Resource Management Act to better effect and fit the common good.

The member who just resumed his seat made a very profound statement. He described the Resource Management Act, and this amendment, as part of a control and command philosophy. He has identified the exact problem that underpins the Resource Management Act. It is really the icon of the socialist legislative tool kit. This is the biggest instrument for control and command. It is the abuse of the Resource Management Act that has caused so many problems to our country. The ACT party is opposing this amendment. It is almost a bit of déjà vu—here we go again! We have been fiddling with it since it was enacted by the National Government way back in 1991—

💬 Dail Jones: Who?

The National Government implemented the Resource Management Act. But all the philosophical thinking was done by the earlier Labour Government, and that gives it no credit. But the point is this. It is a bit like communism—like those apologists for communism who say: “There is nothing wrong with communism, it is wonderful, it is just that we have not implemented it properly yet.” It is exactly the same with the Resource Management Act. Is it not time, after how many years—15 years—we decided that there is something fundamentally wrong in principle? All the tinkering and amendments in the world are not going to make this little puppy work, because it is fundamentally flawed.

The socialists love it. They love it because they can keep more control and more power. It underpins the expanding bureaucracies that we see in local government and all this endless process. It is all about process—endless consultation, rather than outcome for the country’s well-being.

Having said that, some aspects of the bill—some of these tinkerings—are improvements, and I would like to refer to some of those. Most of them were done by the Local Government and Environment Committee, not by the bill as introduced by the socialists over there. I would classify in the improvements the dropping of the provision that an appeal to the Environment Court could not be a de novo hearing. Because it became very clear that if one does that, one has to front up at the local council with a lawyer at all those cases because there is not another chance. So one would actually have to further the process, and the costs, in a lot of routine cases.

Someone made the point that only one in 10 cases actually goes to the Environment Court. But if one said that it could only be a de novo hearing, then one could not afford to take the risk, and all applicants applying for resource consent would actually have to stump up to the council with their lawyers and all the costs associated with that.

The other point made in evidence to the select committee, and made by the judiciary themselves, was that often in the time before a hearing—and hearing an appeal can take 1 or 2 years, perish the thought—new information and new technologies come to hand, and one would, of course, have precluded the consideration of new technologies if that law, as proposed by the Labour Government when it introduced the bill, had been carried through.

The other aspect the ACT party supports is the dropping of the legal phrases. We had this wonderful “urban form”, and “rohe”. They were going to become legal terms, just as in a previous amendment, which the Labour Party promoted, we had “cultural landscape”. Does anyone know what a cultural landscape might be? But that is what the Labour Government earlier tried to import into the Resource Management Act.

We do support the direct referral to the Environment Court, because that can facilitate the process. There are some projects—usually bigger projects—that are clearly going to go directly to the Environment Court, so why carry out the charade of preliminary council hearings? It is far better for all the parties to prepare thoroughly and go straight to the Environment Court, because one knows that it will be there, in any event, at the end of the day. ACT and National have both defended and promoted that and, of course, Labour tried to sort of make capital mileage out of it, but totally without success.

The real problem with this bill, and why the ACT party will be voting against it, is its failure to actually address the fundamental problems that the Resource Management Act has delivered to us. It was meant to be for the sustainable management of natural and physical resources. It was meant to be part of deregulation. It was meant to be a one-stop shop. It was meant to be effects-based, not prescriptive rules. What has really happened is that it got captured during its gestation period and during the intervening 12 years by three interest groups: Māori, greens, and planners and bureaucrats. I will go through those three.

There are definitely Māori issues that need addressing in this country, but what happened was that the gestation of the Resource Management Act coincided with the renaissance in Māori claims and sovereignty, and the Act has been ruthlessly used as an instrument inappropriately. It is meant to be about the sustainable management of natural and physical resources. It is a totally inappropriate tool with which to try to determine metaphysical and spiritual concepts. Yet we have imported all that language. We have even provided for taniwha in the Resource Management Act, and all sorts of nebulous concepts that weigh it down. That is not to say that those matters do not need to be considered, but they certainly should not be considered in the Resource Management Act. It tries to do too much and it defeats itself in doing that.

The other aspect is that it was captured by the green movement during its gestation and development, and now it lacks balance. It was meant to be for sustainable development, and that language was cut out and it became “sustainable management”, but it was meant to be development-focused legislation. It was meant to be part of deregulating the economy—an enabling Act. But instead it has become bogged down, used as a tool, and, of course, the Department of Conservation is the biggest user of the Resource Management Act to impose its will and strip people of their property rights.

The third category that has captured the Act is the planners and bureaucrats. The Act was meant to be a simplification. It was not meant to be rules-based; it was meant to be effects-based. But if we go to the Resource Management Act or to any district plan, we see that the planners hated the thought of anyone taking away their rule book, because that is their power-base. So at every turn, the bureaucrats and the planners have managed to capture the councillors. Some councillors have gone along willingly and turned the Act into a heavy, coded, rule-based law rather than letting it be effects-based law, which was the basic philosophical starting point. It has been totally lost on the way to the forum, and that indeed has meant that the Resource Management Act has become a very destructive instrument in the New Zealand economy.

But perhaps the biggest criticism is the lack of recognition of property rights, and this amendment bill does nothing to address that problem. In a modern, market-based economy that is based on tradable property rights in a global environment, if we do not recognise and provide for property rights in our basic management and allocation of resources, then we have a problem. Property rights are not mentioned in this legislation, and that is because it is the tool in the socialist kit bag and it is used to strip away property rights at every turn.

Anyone can look at a hillside and say: “Oh, that crop of trees is nice. I’m going to go to the council and we’ll have it designated as a protected natural area, and have it designated in the district plan.”, and a compliant council lobbied by the greens would do it. But that hillside happens to belong to someone. It is someone’s property right. If the public at large is saying that it wants that protected for the public good, then they should stump up and pay compensation. That is the test of whether it is really in the public interest. The test is whether the public is prepared to pay compensation for the taking of a property right. But no, the Resource Management Act at every level restricts property rights, strips away property rights, and takes from people the right to do things on their land that they would otherwise be able to do.

In conclusion, I say that this bill does not make any amendments. It is just more tinkering. It totally fails to make the amendments that are required. When I say “amendments” I mean we have to gut the Act and go right back to first principles because the Act is based on shaky ground. Its foundations are so unstable. We do not even have a definition for “sustainable”. We have had 15 years of the courts trying to define this wonderful concept that makes us all feel warm and fuzzy inside, but the legal profession and the courts cannot get an agreement and an understanding of what it means. If we cannot understand the basic meaning of the basic premise of the legislation, then what value does it have?

What we really have here is another lost opportunity to address the Resource Management Act and sort out the problems. I fear that the problems confronting the country and affecting the prosperity and wealth of New Zealand citizens will remain in check because the problems with the Act have not been addressed adequately.

I rise to speak on behalf of United Future in the second reading debate of the Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill. This bill, as often seems to be the case on bills I have had the pleasure of working on during the last 3 years, is not the same bill that was referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee earlier this year. It has undergone considerable change, and one of the good parts of the parliamentary process is the fact that we are able to listen to submissions and make amendments that respond to input from the public.

I put on record my thanks to the officials for their hard work and assistance over the gruelling submission process. We had to work to a very tight time frame, and the officials were very helpful through that process and through the consideration and deliberation phase. I also thank the committee’s advisers for their assistance and advice. Over the past year we have had a lot of discussions with the Government, and in particular the Associate Minister for the Environment, and officials from the Ministry for the Environment on how we could work to make the Resource Management Act more effective and more efficient. We concluded that it was the process provisions in the Act that this next reform bill needed to focus on, rather than amendments to Part II in the bill—the major foundation of the principal Act itself. That is still our view—that we do not need to touch those provisions but that we need to work on making the Act work more efficiently and work on the local council processes and on their handling of this Act.

It is true that some of the proposals contained in the original bill were soundly rejected by a broad cross-section of the community that presented submissions to the committee. It is to the Minister’s credit, supported by Cabinet and the officials of the Ministry for the Environment, that these concerns were listened to and responded to. I think that part of the process of amending legislation—the select committee process—is the strength of our parliamentary democracy.

I also want to thank the committee clerks who worked so long and hard to serve us and the people of New Zealand in the work surrounding submissions to the select committee, and the drafting of our reports. Thanks also go to the staff from the Parliamentary Counsel Office who draft and redraft our suggested changes. As I said, some major parts of this bill were rejected by a broad cross-section of the community that presented submissions to the committee, particularly the plans to shift away from de novo hearing processes in the Environment Court, but that does not mean that this bill does not still contain many useful amendments that have been welcomed, supported, and endorsed by many. The suggestion from the Green Party that this bill is just a little bit of tinkering is far short of the mark. The amendments in this bill, once adopted, will result in more workable proposals and more workable implementation of the Resource Management Act across the nation.

To our surprise, a very interesting by-product came from this process. I once suggested to the committee that it might have even been a clever plan of the Government to have engineered it this way, but I have since discarded that possibility. It was that we had representatives from the business community, the development community and sector, local government, and environmental groups, all coming to the committee to assure us that the operation of the Resource Management Act was not as bad as some were continuing to make out, and that in fact the Environment Court in particular was now operating on a much more efficient and timely basis. They begged us, really, not to make too many radical changes to the Resource Management Act, because they believe that the amendments passed in the past 3 years and the efficiencies gained in the Environment Court were making major changes and major improvements to the way the Act was operating.

Certainly, much of the credit for that must go to Judge Bollard, and I thank him for the time he gave to the committee and for the insight we gained from his advice and his comments. The planning system, the management file case tracking system, which he has implemented has made huge improvements to the operation of the Environment Court, so much so that many of the submitters said that it had taken only 6 months for them to have their appeals go through the Environment Court, and that is making everything work much better.

Based on all the feedback we received, I think it is a little out of date to be blaming the Resource Management Act for all the problems in the country and to be calling for a major overhaul. In my opinion that is no longer the way forward. We hear the speech from Ken Shirley and the ACT party frequently, but never do we find any real policy from the ACT party on what it would do if it did abolish the Resource Management Act, or on what it would replace it with.

I note that National is intending some further changes in its election policies and I think that some of those changes would have United Future’s support. Certainly, three of National’s proposed changes are already accomplished in this bill—namely, enabling resource consent applicants to refuse further information requests from councils and to have their consent accepted or rejected on the information provided. In fact, it was Nick Smith who helped us find the way forward with this, and I thank him for that, so that in practice it did not become a back-door way for applicants to bypass the local authority processes and go direct to the Environment Court—something all the committee wanted to avoid.

The bill also expands the capacity of councils to reject vexatious and frivolous objectors. That is another part of National’s policy, though we may find that that new capacity is very seldom used. The new power, although given to the councils, may not be useful on many occasions because the amendments we have had to make in order to safeguard any abuse of that power make it almost potentially more of a risk to ever strike out a submission that is frivolous or vexatious. In many cases it is simply better to let it sit there and be ignored. Then there is the direct referral to the Environment Court, which is something else National is calling for, and something, certainly, that United Future has been urging the Government to consider since our time here in this Parliament. In 2002 we began to call on it to do this and we are very pleased to see that although it is in a slightly different form than we first envisaged, and certainly slightly different from what National is proposing, it is adopted in this legislation and is given to the Minister as one of the very useful tools he or she may have when exercising his or her powers under the call-in provisions of the Resource Management Act. With those proposals addressed from National’s own policies, one can only hope for its support for the bill as we proceed through all stages of the passage of this amendment into law this week, hopefully today.

In United Future we acknowledge that there are some changes that we have been unable to convince the Government to make as yet. One of those would have been the reintroduction of the ability of the Environment Court to require security for costs, which we always felt should not have been taken from the court, but we are pleased with the progress we have been able to achieve in the last 3 years, which culminates in this bill before the House this week. It is United Future’s intention to ensure that future Governments conduct a biannual review of the Resource Management Act to ensure that ongoing improvements are achieved for all concerned. Legislation such as the Resource Management Act will always be somewhat of a work in progress and will need ongoing monitoring and improvement so that we can make it work as best as possible.

In this bill we have deleted the words “national interest” mentioned in it. United Future was keen to see that go, because the concept of national interest is not defined and many submitters considered its use ambiguous, and we agreed with them. Also there was a need to make much clearer what the new ministerial powers were, because many submitters thought they would be Godlike powers, and we were pleased to see that corrected. We understand, though, that the Minister needs adequate tools to monitor the performance of local authorities, particularly our regional councils, for they are the first level of Government that are supposed to be our environmental watchdogs. The Minister must be able to give them advice and ask them to do certain things, and that is what has been accomplished by the amendments.

United Future was very happy to see the deletion of “urban form”—something that we lobbied for—and we are happy to have the Minister agree to that because it was introducing new terms that were not easily understood and not necessary. Councils already have sufficient tools to be able to address issues of urban form. In fact, many are beginning to do so. In that regard I, of course, refer to the excellent work done by Smart Growth in the Bay of Plenty. It has not needed this new amendment in order to proceed with its proposals.

United Future will be supporting this second reading and we look forward to further debate through the Committee stage and the passage of the bill later in the day.

I shall take a very short call to support this bill. I had the opportunity, and privilege, to be on the Local Government and Environment Committee that heard the many, many submissions, and we had the opportunity to travel around the country to listen to many and varied submitters. This bill is a good bill. It shows that this competent Government is providing strong, sound leadership and effective services. This bill amends the Resource Management Act 1991 to improve the quality of decisions and processes, by creating certainty and reducing costs and delays, while not compromising environmental outcomes nor sacrificing public participation. We do not apologise for making the Resource Management Act work better. The Act can and should be made to work better for all New Zealanders. We have identified a series of issues and have come up with timely, sensible, and well-thought-out solutions. We are committed to protecting and preserving the unique aspects of New Zealand’s natural environment. That means striking the right balance between our desire for a clean, healthy environment and our expectations of growth and opportunity. I support this bill.

I was as aggrieved as Nick Smith and the majority of members in this House to see Supplementary Order Paper 389 come forward today in the name of the Hon David Benson-Pope without any forewarning from the Government, not just to us as members of Parliament, but of course, to the general public whom we are supposed to represent. In it we see 132 clauses that cannot be considered by this House in any depth or by the public, and we are appalled at that. Of course, it is not the only supplementary order paper brought into this House—rushed in under urgency—this morning. There is also Supplementary Order Paper 388, again in the name of the Hon David Benson-Pope. I remind members in this House, and the public who are listening intently to this debate, that the commentary on the bill states—and should members who know what the bill actually does do buckle over in laughter when I read this out, we will forgive them—“The bill seeks to improve the operation of the Resource Management Act by addressing problems with delays, costs, inconsistencies, uncertainty, and a lack of national leadership regarding the Act’s processes and in decision making. The bill seeks to address these concerns.” A footnote from the National Party is that the bill fails to do that. It fails to address the problems with delays and costs, as it states in the commentary, or with inconsistencies, uncertainty, and the lack of Labour Government leadership regarding the Act’s processes and decision making.

I was appalled at the temporary member for Otago’s reference to energy issues throughout this country, when he spoke some 30 minutes ago. The member for Otago, who is a temporary member, must have his head in the sand. I know that he is diverted by the fact that John Carter and the National Party candidate for Otago are out there door-knocking today in Otago, in Queenstown, and around there, collecting votes—he will be diverted by that. The reality is that his statement that energy generation projects—those begun in the last few years—have improved under the Labour Government is absolute rubbish. All of New Zealand knows there has been a raft of energy generation projects and transmission projects put on the back burner, with no decision pending, throughout this country over the last few years. Companies such as Meridian Energy, Genesis Power, and Contact Energy have all put proposals on the table. They have all stumped up with the cash, set out their ideas for where they would generate electricity, and asked to be shown where they need to make changes. But there has been no certainty for them, and there has been no certainty for the public.

I will give just four examples. Project Aqua in the South Island was a proposal for hydroelectricity generation. There was no certainty on that proposal for the farmers, the public, and the generation company down in the South Island for many, many months because of the elongated and bureaucratic processes of the Resource Management Act. There was the wind generation project in south Auckland, which apparently was going to scare a whole lot of horses. Under the Act and this Government, for months and months there was no certainty for the public, the energy generation company, and the horses in south Auckland in respect of that wind generation project, and, of course, it has not commenced. In the electorate that I represent, there was a proposal to put in a coal-fired power station at Marsden Point. The good people living at Marsden Point and Whangarei Heads and the energy company, Mighty River Power, have had no certainty at all of that project going forward, because of the elongated and uncertain processes under the Act—absolutely no certainty whatsoever.

Of course, there is also the issue of the transmission lines into Auckland. For the landowners affected, this Government has kicked the issue for touch by passing it on to the Electricity Commission, which will not make a decision until next June. There is uncertainty for those landowners, for Transpower, for 1 million Aucklanders, who, when they get up in the morning, like to have a hot shower, for the dairy farmers, who, when they get up in the morning, would like to think that the milking machines will work, and for all the businesses in downtown Auckland that want to open up their tills. There is no certainty for them, for landowners in the north Waikato and south Auckland area, and for Transpower. Those are four examples under this Government of electricity industry projects being put on the table with the proposal and the cash, but of there being no certainty for those affected or for the generating companies, either. So it is a joke that the temporary member for Otago says that things have been going smoothly under this Labour Government when it comes to the Act.

The National Party is absolutely delighted that it was able to make some major changes and gut the bill that came into the House originally. Originally the bill was tied up in bureaucratic processes that gave people more and more opportunities to object, irrespective of whether their objections were vexatious or genuine, and we had some effect on pulling back that bureaucracy. But we believe that this bill still just tinkers with the Act. A major overhaul of the Act is required, and this bill will not resolve the substantial concerns over costs, delays, and uncertainty. We need to fix the Act. It needs a major overhaul, not tinkering. National has come out very clearly and said that in the first 3 months of taking over the Government offices, we will table a serious Resource Management Act bill. In 9 months we will pass that bill, having given 6 months’ opportunity to the public to have an effect on the bill that we table. We know that after 13 years, most of the country understands the difficulties in the Act and what is required, and we will introduce those changes.

For example, we will prevent vexatious and frivolous objectors by doing three things. One is that we will not fund them to be vexatious and frivolous. At the moment the environment fund pays objectors to go to court. There is no cost on them, and they can stop projects from going through. The Labour Government funds people to do that. National will get rid of environmental legal aid for vexatious and frivolous objectors. Secondly, we will hold them to account. We will allow the court, where it has been proven that objectors have been frivolous and vexatious, to award costs against them, so that they will carry risk when they object to a proposal for no good reason. They will carry costs if it is proven that they have objected for no good reason. We will also introduce standing, whereby only someone directly affected by a development proposal can be involved in the process. It is easy to work out who is directly affected. It is simply a test-case scenario, whereby someone is affected to a greater degree than any normal citizen. If people are affected in that way, they can involve themselves in the process. But if they are sitting in Invercargill and objecting to something in Kaitāia, then that will not be allowed.

This bill only tinkers. National will introduce a bill that seriously overhauls the Resource Management Act, and I can hear the country clapping from inside this House.

I want to speak in support of the bill, and in particular of Supplementary Order Paper 389. I do so having spent all morning in my office looking after the positive developmental concerns of my Napier constituency, which is throbbing with progress as it strides in development.

When I came into the House for my 30-second speech in support of this bill I picked up Supplementary Order Paper 389, and I cannot see what National members are complaining about. Perhaps because it is not in cartoon form they have trouble dealing with it. My eyes lit upon this phrase here, which amends the definition clause for contaminated land. On the first page of the Supplementary Order Paper it states, in relation to contaminated land: “if there is no applicable national environmental standard on contaminants”. Of course there is no applicable national environmental standard on contaminants, because the National Party members are social anarchists. They are the apparatchiks of the commercial world who would have no applicable national environmental standards at all. That is why we need a Labour Government. There are no applicable national environmental standards in the National Party. We need this legislation to have some control over rampant commercialisation and policy directives from overseas, as carried out by this terrible National Opposition, which is fading into obscurity.

I take this opportunity during my 30-second speech to welcome the election, because there are no national environmental standards and this bill at least recognises that. I have not heard one member opposite refer to any national environmental standards. So we need a definition clause because of the absence of any national environmental standards. We need Supplementary Order Paper 389. This bill is a very good piece of legislation that I am glad we are passing under urgency, because if it were up to those fellows over there they would still be sleeping until Christmas and they would not know an election had taken place. They lack any national standards, and that is why this bill is such a good bill.

Before I use my 30 seconds, I have to say that the good people of Napier know there are no national standards at all. That is why it will be a Labour seat for many years to come. They know the fraud that has been perpetuated by these people who travel to Washington for policy. No, that is not in the bill—I am talking about applicable national environmental standards, and if we had one from the National members we could sit here and applaud them. But we sit here in desperation at the lack of policy, and at all the bluff and all the social anarchy. This bill brings common sense to the Resource Management Act. I welcome it. I just wish I had 30 minutes to talk on it, not 30 seconds, because this is the most important piece of legislation that could come before this House today.

What a splendid 30 seconds of nonsense. Just in case people have been listening on the radio to those comments, they need to know that the last Labour Party speaker had 10 minutes’ speaking time, and instead chose to rant for 30 seconds. It is not an original comment to make—that this is a Government characterised by flip-flops and foolishness. Nowhere is that more exemplified than in this legislation, the Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill. It is small wonder, therefore, that National strongly opposes this legislation.

We see another execrable trait of this Government in the late tabling today, while this Parliament is in urgency, of Supplementary Order Paper 389. Unsurprisingly, it contains 35 pages of densely written, turgid amendments. What has happened here, of course, is that as a matter of deliberate policy the Government has chosen to circumvent the select committee process. That process exists for the careful evaluation, with public input, of the provisions of a Government bill. What has the Government done? It has gone through a select committee process, sure, but then it has subverted that process by the amendments that come to Parliament today. That is wholly unsatisfactory lawmaking. That is stuff that any reasonable Government should be utterly ashamed of. That is why I say that this is a Government characterised by the flip-flops that are contained in this Supplementary Order Paper and by the flip-flops that have occurred in the select committee process, as dramatic reversal decisions have been made.

I just remind members that the history of town planning legislation in New Zealand is quite old. We had the first Town and Country Planning Act in 1926, we had another statute in 1953, another statute in 1977, and then of course the Resource Management Act came in 1991. If one looks at that legislation in its various historic forms, it is to be seen that it has become steadily more and more complex.

But that is only one aspect of the dynamic of complexity because, sitting in behind the Resource Management Act and the subordinate legislation that comprises regulations and rules, is a raft of other materials. I am referring to district scheme and district plan documents. I will take the case of the Auckland City Council as an example. There are literally volumes and volumes of material that seek to exemplify and explain the provisions of the Resource Management Act as they relate to the city of Auckland. It is an absolute disgrace that this legislation, passed in 1991 with an obligation to provide operative district plans, has seen an outcome where in many parts of the districts in New Zealand that work has not been completed. So local authorities, and those who come to local authorities to seek planning consents, are forced to grapple with a plan that is in the process of being made operative and the need to give effect to the current operative plan.

National is committed to the substantial reform of the Resource Management Act because we believe that such reforms are critical to addressing New Zealand’s roading and electricity infrastructure crisis. They are also important in attracting investment in industries like forestry and reducing compliance costs for farms, small business, and homeowners. Surely the objective must be to reduce the costs, the delays, and the uncertainties of the Act, while maintaining high environmental standards.

That is not to say we do not support the underpinning principles of the Act. We do. We support the commitment to sustainability. We support an integrated approach to environment management. We support a focus on environmental effects. Our major concern is that the Act has become too complex and cumbersome.

Let me give just one illustration. There are 15,000 pages of district and regional plans. There are 50,000 consents required each year, and a 7-year average time is required for a council to process a plan change. Just by way of comparison, in earlier legislation there were simple identified circumstances where consent was required. There were predominant uses, conditional uses, and uses neither predominant nor conditional that required a specified departure planning consent. That has now been made incredibly much more complicated by new classes of activity and by subtle wording of different tests for each class of activity.

So what we want to do is to rebalance several key aspects of the Act. The Act is too idealistic about public consultation. People talk about consultation fatigue: the circumstance where so great is the consultation obligation that both the parties and those being consulted are simply worn out by a process that is itself incredibly time enduring and incredibly costly. We have the situation—and Mr Heatley has spoken about this—that, because of the wide-ranging ability to object, minority interests can impose huge costs or delays on communities. Dr Nick Smith, who knows a substantial amount about this legislation, will cite the illustration of how these days it takes longer to get the necessary planning consent to build the road, than to actually build the road itself.

💬 Hon David Benson-Pope: Rubbish!

I hear Mr Benson-Pope, whose ignorance of town planning legislation is manifest. He is a Minister who struggles with his portfolio in even its most simple aspects, and he is groaning that what I am saying is incorrect. He is a man who should focus, for the short period of time that remains in this Parliament, on his portfolio responsibilities. He is a man who should seek to gain some greater insight as to why this legislation is not working. He should heed the public concern, which is manifestly out there in connection with delays, in connection with costs, and in connection with the unsatisfactory nature of this legislation.

I have said that the Act is too idealistic about public consultation. A second point is that it gives insufficient weighting to the rights of property owners about how their land is used. A simple illustration of this is that some councils have zones that impact on rural areas where substantial tracts of forest in private ownership are preserved in effect in a park-like setting for the benefit of the public at large. It should be no part of the plan that it is for private landowners to retain land effectively as a public reserve.

Thirdly, the Act is too devolved. It results in councils in every part of the country having to reinvent the wheel. Let me give an illustration of that. In the noise area, with the number of local authorities in New Zealand, there are separate noise standards for each local authority district. So as we traverse the country, seeking to establish a particular activity, we need to look at the specific noise standards in each particular district. Those standards are quite arbitrary, and they should be constant. Another illustration is in the area of air quality controls, where there is huge variation from regional council to regional council.

Mr Heatley has said what our plan is, which is to reform the Resource Management Act in two phases. The first phase involves process issues, which have been extensively debated. As Mr Heatley has said, the bill will be introduced within 3 months of the election and passed into law within 9 months. That drafting work is well advanced. The second phase of the reform will deal with the more complex issues of resource allocation and infrastructure provision.

I rise to support this Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill. This is a tricky area for Parliament to deal with in terms of the balance we have to strike between legitimate development and both the preservation of the conservation estate of New Zealand and the resources we have to manage and look after. I think that wherever that balance is struck there is always debate around its edges.

But when we start talking about the Resource Management Act, National goes into overdrive with its rhetoric. We have heard from Nick Smith that the Resource Management Act is stifling growth in New Zealand. That is, of course, despite the fact that New Zealand has a higher average growth rate than any other country in the OECD. But National members put all that to one side; facts can be a real nuisance in that regard to National.

We have to make sure we get proper legislation that protects people’s rights to appeal, and that protects the rights of local authorities to put in place responsible plans for managing their areas’ environmental assets, but that also allows people to get their applications considered quickly and fairly and, if they are approved on the basis of the standards agreed to, allows that work to start. I think that what we have come to Parliament with today, in the second reading of this bill, is the latest attempt to get that balance right.

But I say to the House that if we were to give in and agree to every concession National wanted, in its pursuit to strip this country of environmental standards, National would then argue that the Resource Management Act was too tight—even if we moved to that position. So wherever we strike the balance, there is argument around it; that is the nature, I think, of resource planning.

We have made enormous improvements in the Environment Court—in halving the time of cases there—and we have also been able to put in place a number of key changes, so that local governments have the tools to be fair and consistent arbiters of consent applications.

I think David Benson-Pope has done a great job of listening to the people who have to make this legislation work—that is, our local government authorities across the country. Of course, when there are 74 of those authorities there is some variance in the way the legislation is judged, and that is why training is so important. But let us not throw the baby out with the bath water in our rush to have the toughest rhetoric on the Resource Management Act. It will always be a difficult area in which to come up with the right balance, but I think this bill does that.

I heard Dr Worth mention the fact that National has a timeline for a reform of the Resource Management Act. I give that about as much credibility as the much-vaunted tax cuts we have been waiting for. We were told, were we not, several weeks ago that tax cuts were due to be announced? Then we were told we were playing games with the election date, and as soon as that was out we would know the date of the tax cuts. Now we find out that the New Zealand public has to wait until almost 3 or 4 weeks before the election for National to put on record what its members say is so important. So I have no faith in what Dr Worth was saying about a Resource Management Act process.

Finally, I want to reiterate what my colleague the Hon David Benson-Pope had to say—that although we have heard lots from National speakers about how outrageous the Resource Management Act is, with all its appeal rights slowing down development, what is the first piece of legislation National members all reach for whenever there is a development or idea they do not like? The Resource Management Act!

💬 Hon Paul Swain: And prisons.

Mr Swain, the Minister of Corrections, mentions prisons. I am glad he has done that, because I notice that Paul Hutchison, the member for Waikato, opposed the Spring Hill Corrections Facility. I notice that “brains trust” Phil Heatley railed against the Northland Regional Corrections Facility up in Whangarei. Bill English, the former—soon to be next—leader of the National Party, did not like a prison at Milton and wanted to use the Resource Management Act to oppose that, and the theatrical member for Bay of Plenty, Tony Ryall, in doing one of his law and order routines, said he wanted six to 10 more prisons everywhere, with parole, but as soon as one was going to be in his backyard he reached for the Resource Management Act to try to stop it. There are words for that.

💬 Hon Paul Swain: What about the member for Nelson?

We could not expect a consistent thing to come from Nick Smith. He likes to beat his chest and say how tough on crime he is, but as soon as the authorities sniffed around Nelson for a prison site, he rushed out for the appeal processes of the Resource Management Act, he rushed out to embrace tikanga Māori, and he rushed out to make sure there were strong provisions in the Act in order to give his local people in Nelson the appeal rights he felt they needed. So it really is all a bit much!

And I have not even had time to mention Judith Collins, who sort of runs the National Party independently from the second row and operates in splendid isolation, much to the chagrin of all her colleagues, as she sails forth. She wants to use the Resource Management Act and all its rights on the situation of the Transpower pylons. Apparently, it is quite good to have the Resource Management Act processes for that.

When National members are talking rhetoric they say they must shut down all that Māori “nonsense” and all those appeal rights, and that the Resource Management Act is a terrible, terrible thing, until something turns up that happens to be a campaign area of theirs—that is, prisons—and then they must have a tougher Resource Management Act. National is all at sea, it is not ready for this general election, and I think that that is the view the New Zealand electorate will take in 6 weeks and 3 days’ time.